MP3=Crash

Whenever I try to play an audio file (mp3, wav, ogg, etc), my computer crashes. the entire thing locks up and makes me feel like im using windows (minus the blue screen). it happens no matter what program i use to listen to 'em.....rhythmbox, mplayer, muine, mpg123, you name it, it doesnt work. it also crashes when i try to plat games with sound, mainly ut2004. it also crashes 50% of the time when i watch movies...dvd's, avi's, etc....i tried reinstalling mplayer and rhythmbox and gstreamer. my roommate suggested i run 'gst-register-0.8' to load all the plugins an such....that worked up until i tried to watch a dvd, then after rebooting, it still didnt work. this is very annoying because what good is a computer if you cant listen to music, watch movies, and play games? :x
It worked perfectly before i broke my install and had to reinstall arch. ive also had no problems with suse, mandrake, fedora, knoppix, and ubuntu.
does anyone have any suggestions?
im running arch .7, kernel 2.6.10, CMedia sound card, alsa 1.0.8-1, gnome 2.8
if you need more information, feel free to ask

Re: MP3=Crash

i uninstalled the alsa that i pacmaned, then recompiled alsa using ./configure --with-card=cmipci (i think thats the command)....after that was done, i rebooted (just to be sure everything reloaded), it worked up until i did a pacman -Syu....then it locked up....im running alsa 1.0.8

penguin, i got flac 1.1.1....altho, im not entirely sure how flac would affect my computer.....do mp3 players use it or something? as you can tell, im not very experienced with flac....

hope that helps......right now, i have my walkman hooked up to my speakers so i can have some music.....the UT withdrawl is starting to set in....